Final Fantasy 7, Tomb Raider Headline Inductees To World Video Game Hall of Fame (polygon.com) 43
Dave Knott writes: The 2018 World Video Game Hall of Fame inductees have been announced. The Hall Of Fame "recognizes individual electronic games of all types — arcade, console, computer, handheld, and mobile -- that have enjoyed popularity over a sustained period and have exerted influence on the video game industry or on popular culture and society in general." The 2018 inductees are: Final Fantasy 7, John Madden Football, Spacewar!, and the first Tomb Raider.
Why not Final Fantasy 6? (Score:1)
Because it wasn't "3D" enough?
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Well, it kinda says what the honour criteria is in the summary "that have enjoyed popularity over a sustained period and have exerted influence on the video game industry or on popular culture and society in general"
There's no doubt in my mind that FF7 fits the bill, heck I bet there's somebody cosplaying Cloud right now somewhere in the world. There are a lot of great games (FF6 among them) but there are some that stick out more than others.
Obviously "Hall of Fame" type organizations are strange in that th
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There's no doubt in my mind that FF7 fits the bill
Despite its impact, games in that era are uniquely difficult to go back and enjoy. The graphics just do not hold up like 2d games or subsequent 3d games.
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Nobody knew how to do 3D games at the time. FFVII field graphics used hand-drawn 2D backgrounds, with 3D animated characters overlaid on them. Other contemporary games did the exact opposite (like Xenogears), and had 3D environments
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Dunno, they inducted World of Warcraft, but not Everquest. Not even mentioning EQ on the write up (though conspicuously referencing Ultima Online.)
WoW was certainly influential, but in no way, shape, or form was it more influential than the original Everquest. UO came along prior (along with a bunch of other MUDS, graphical or not) But in terms of mass market, 3-d, first person MMO's -- if EQ wasn't first, I'd be curious as to what came first.
This points out the problem with these sorts of things (be it
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EQ was not stale, EQ was difficult and rewarded perseverance and the ability to interact with other humans in a respectful manner (unless you were Furor, then it rewarded being an asshole)
WoW rewarded turning up and being an asshole, exclusively.
Given there are more asshole children than adults* in the world, WoW was wildly popular.
*Age at which you become an adult may vary.
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WoW simply would not exist had it not been for eq.
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That's the nature of "Hall of Fame" lists - it's a popularity contest, not an olympic competition.
Everquest may have done all the things WoW did before WoW came along, but WoW added the approach ability and is still the reigning king of MMOs. Everquest never had 15 million+ subscribers.
Similarly with FF7 and FF6. FF7 was a 4-disk story that created a world and characters that inspired movies, figures, remakes, fan art and so on for DECADES afterward. FF6 is widely regarded to be the best of the FF series,
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I am not even an RPG fan, but I know that FF7 is absolutely massive by comparison. It was a real accomplishment far beyond anything like it at the time.
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I am not even an RPG fan, but I know that FF7 is absolutely massive by comparison. It was a real accomplishment far beyond anything like it at the time.
It's not the size of the game, it's the second part. There was nothing like it at the time. And they were smart enough to make a multi-platform release! You could get it for the PC, and it had support for the plethora of 3d accelerators available at the time. It was still better on the Playstation, though, if you could live with the low resolution. They used Direct3d over DirectVideo on Windows and the two didn't sync, so going up elevators and such looked bad.
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Because the transition from 16 Bit to 32 Bit was the point where video games truly broke into the mass market and became a fundamental way of entertainment. I remember that back in the day me and one other classmate where the only ones who owned a Super Nintendo. Since I'm from Europe, I had to import FF3/6 from the US and was the only person I know who had it. Then the PSX came and half of my class had one. FF7 was the first FF to be released in Europe ever, so for many people it was also the first FF ever
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Compare the numbers of the Super Nintendo (strongest contender of the 16 Bit era) to Sony Playstation 1-3. There is a significant rise. In Europe this trend was probably more extreme due to the huge change of the market landscape in the mid 90s.
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Oh, and compare the number of available games for SNES and MD and the PSs.
https://www.neogaf.com/threads... [neogaf.com]
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FF7 to me was one of the first games that tried to be bigger than itself - and pulled it off - it was an extravagant cinematic/multimedia experience and one of the first of its kind to do so successfully.
The scene with Aeris death still makes me cry.
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I've got at least 100 hours into Klondike solitaire, if I can include the times I've played with physical cards.
What, no Trio the Punch? (Score:2)
WORLD Videogame Hall of Fame (Score:1)
Why do Americans always do this?
World Videogame Hall of Fame : John Madden Football
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Because the European version titled "John Madden Handegg" didn't sell nearly as well.
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Maybe there's other completely open roamers out there, but I'm not sure what they are.
Have you never played a Fallout game?
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I'm kinda surprised to not see that in the list.
Skyrim was the first game I ever played where I wasn't stuck on a track with only really one path of progression.
I could just decide "I don't feel like going there, I'm going over here". I'm not constrained by the plot or the story line if I don't wish to be, and I can endlessly play it and totally ignore aspects of it. In fact, I still do.
The ability to just go exploring and mapping out the environment, not being in some endless grind, not getting stuck on some damned level which causes me to stop playing after dying 50 times (as I often have done) ... this is why I think Skyrim is entirely different.
Maybe there's other completely open roamers out there, but I'm not sure what they are.
Man, Skyrim was not even the first title among TES series that did "open roamers" stuff
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The first two Fallout games are still enjoyable, but the interfaces on all those other games (except maybe the later TES games) are atrocious. I never understood how anyone found Ultima enjoyable. It's all the tedium of playing a pen and paper game without the enjoyability of other humans
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The first Might and Magic (The Secret of the Inner Sanctum, 1986) was amazing. It had a deep story, crazy huge world with dungeons and overworld exploration, multiple towns, and secrets you would never expect or be able to find if you weren't
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Yeah, the UIs may suck by current standards, but for the time they were okay-to-amazing.
The various TSR-licensed games had better, for doing basically the same thing. I call shenanigans. By the time they got to Pool of Radiance the interface was really quite enjoyable... for the day. It would be tolerable now except for the font
Diversity? (Score:2)
The four inductees span multiple decades, countries of origin, and gaming platforms,
One can only hope this is a happenstance noticed after the inductees were selected rather than an important selection criterium to somehow validate the "World" in World VG HoF...
Wait, Spacewar! is only being inducted now? (Score:2)